Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/1596
ILTA White Paper E-Mail Life Cycle 18 terrence J. cOan esentiO technOlOgies ann m. Ostrander kirkland & ellis llp A ttorneys have transitioned from working with physical records to working with digital ones. They live in e-mail. Most knowledge workers, attorneys included, spend at least half of their day working in e-mail. The IT advisory firm, IDC, has estimated that more than 60 percent of business-critical information is stored in messaging systems. In one firm that places no limits on mailboxes, the average attorney's mailbox size is an estimated 1.5 GB. The median is approaching 5 GB, and we've seen the extreme reach as high as 40 GB. As a result, a significant portion of a firm's critical information and client records reside in messaging systems. That material is often stored in a non-structured format accessible only to the author or recipient of the message and, if the attorney has left the firm, difficult to "discover" should a court come knocking. The client file is incomplete without this critical communication being managed as part of the official file. The volume of information being retained by firms in unofficial systems is exploding. The "keep-it-all-forever" approach is no longer reasonable because information is duplicated significantly; some pundits estimate duplication of more than 50 percent. In addition, once a matter is closed, a majority of the information is never accessed again. "Over-retaining" disorganized information sets up a firm for extraordinarily broad discovery requests, and leads to expensive and time-consuming collection efforts responding to client requests or to legal/ regulatory inquiries. The challenge for a law firm's administration, therefore, is to develop supporting workflows and install supporting technologies that make records management a natural and "invisible" work process for attorneys, one that they find easy to use and can follow during the course of business. Many firms turn to archiving solutions to handle the massive volume of data retained in their messaging systems. An alternative to that approach is to combine software technologies and records management principles that, when implemented, support the lifecycle management of e-mail, which could potentially eliminate the need for an e-mail archiving system. A Purist RM Perspective: E-Mail Needs Maintaining, Not Archiving Use a Lifecycle Management Approach to Keep Only What Is Needed "The IT advisory firm, IdC, has estimated that more than 60 percent of business-critical information is stored in messaging systems."